The /newstuff Chronicles #193

Alright kids, listen up. The higher ups at Doomworld were lookin' for some people to do T/nC spots, and while this isn't normally my thing I figured I may as well try. I'm not really a mapmaker, or a demo runner, or anything much more than a player. What you're about to read is just the honest opinion of some guy in his apartment who likes to play Doom sometimes. So, if the review isn't exactly up to snuff with your more seasoned T/nC reviewers, then too damn bad.

That said, this week is mostly DM, with a single-player EDGE map and one new release. Without further adieu...

The Best WAD Ever by Wang, hobomaster22, MasterOFDeath153 KB - Any DM capable engine/port + Doom2 - DM - 30 maps -
At first I was gonna come on here and say that this was not worth anyone's time blah blah, but then I actually played it. And while essentially each "map" is one room, usually with one kind of weapon (or mostly with one weapon), and lacking ammo completely, I found these maps to be quite a bit of fun. Most of them have little elements that make fighting in them tough. The absence of ammo means you're pretty much gonna fight with what you got, and you'll have to wait until you die before you'll have ammo for gun (x) again. I wouldn't say they're the best small deathmatch maps ever, nor would I say this wad is really fitting of its title, but I can say this pack isn't as bad as people were telling me it was.

Warning: Textfile smacks of smugness.

Chips Ahoy by Spunkman1510 KB - Skulltag - DM - 1 map -
I didn't think I was going to even bother playing this for more than 5 seconds, as the author personally told me it was not even playable. I figured "why not?" I'd have to say I was quite surprised. First off, when you load the map, you'll be treated to a bit of visual splendor. The map itself is modeled (pretty well I must say) off an Adaptec internal/external SCSI card. Every resistor, every chip, even the pci connector pins, are all there. The map itself has something else to offer as well: good gameplay. Other than the pecking hunt for ammo, this map is pretty good for about 6-8 players. Any less than that and you'll probably never catch each other. I liked being able to get up on the different chips and hit from up high, but you can also hide behind capacitors as well. This map does suffer from dropped frame rates in some views, but overall on a decent machine it shouldn't be too bad. You may want to knock the resolution down a notch or two before stepping into the ring. Overall I found it visually appealing, just drop in some more ammo and you have a pretty good 8 player slaughterfest.

This map wins my wad of the week!

UAC Rebels, revision 1 by Fano++64k/Hexagon17167 KB - Doomsday 1.8.1 - SP - 1 map -
Ok, it says it requires 1.8.1 and nothing else, yet the latest version available off the Doomsday website is 1.8.0. I had to go to here to find 1.8.1 hiding.

Once I finally managed to install 1.8.1, I loaded this up with no trouble. This map is an entry into The Doomsday Editing Contest (there's a contest?!) However, right off the bat there were weird bugs. First, there were missing textures on walls and models. I know I followed the instructions according to the readme. Once I do that and it still doesn't work right, then there's some serious problems. Secondly, the weapon models wouldn't even show up! Some would flicker in if I shot, but that's it. The pistol wouldn't even show at all. The shotgun and super shotgun are from Quake 2, so you'll already know what those are like. The plasma wasn't replaced, so I idfa'd myself some plasma and started going through. Also, you MUST play this with models on, otherwise you'll be fighting bullet puffs and armor helmets.

The new soldier models aren't bad, and there is an ed-209 clone that's kinda neat, but the AI is just retarded. Most of the time, these guys just killed each other; considering they weren't zombies I found that a little bizarre. Textures in this map are not too shabby, but as with many doomsday maps, this one seems to rely on colored lighting and lightspill to give atmosphere, and the architecture unfortunately suffers.

If I had to judge this contest, I'd say this one would fall by the wayside. I hope this is not a glimpse of what could be seen in the contest. Good effort, but the errors make it not worth playing.

Godless: Megawad by Chris Bilski and Blain Newport909 KB - Zdoom (?) + Doom2 - DM - 30 maps - Ah, yet another 30 map DM pack. First of all, I must stress, DO NOT PUT MONSTERS IN DM MAPS KTHX. I know the text file says run it with -nomonsters, but still, there's no reason for it, and it's not as though these maps could be played in SP anyway. It was pretty tough to review things like ammo and weapon placement with having to balance it out with monsters as well. From a technical standpoint, they weren't terrible. There were no weird texture issues or problematic architecture, so it does at least have that going for it. I didn't see anything that would be ZDoom specific in these maps; it appears that they just said ZDoom because it was all they tested it in. Overall, unless you're the monster-DM type, I'd just sit this one out.

The Moonbase by MasterOFDeath83 KB - doom2.exe - SP - 1 map - From one of the authors of The Best Wad Ever comes The Moonbase. This map is pretty much your standard classic fare. It was tricky at times, but health and ammo seemed like a pretty fair balance. Those who enjoy the "run to the end of the base, get the card come all the way back to the beginning" type of puzzle in their maps will love this one very much. Nothing seemed out of place, but the lack of detail was a little disappointing. However, based on the author's notes in the text file ("This level was originally just me toying around in a editor out of boredom…") I don't think detail was his main goal. No detail is better than bad detail in my book. In any case, overall it was about 15 minutes of quick fun and not worth not downloading.

Uber Crap by Fiend346 KB - EDGE 1.28a - SP - 1 map - Last week Fiend gave us Phobos Oribital and S.Q.W.I.R.E.L., now he takes a dump in our shoe. The name practically writes its own review. The supposed purpose behind this map is that nazi's are taking over your "nightclub" (is the beginning the nightclub?), and you have to fight off giant romero heads. Good times here we come! Besides the technical problems like lots of fullbright and pegged/missing upper and lower textures, this map has no point. The weapons are somewhat interesting in functionality but not worth the download. And of course, what joke wad wouldn't be complete without a gratuitous use of impse (with accompanying sound). As I said, the name speaks for itself. Avoid.

Re-releases

Just one re-release this time, and it's certainly a classic, from what I hear anyway

2002 A DOOM ODYSSEY (V2) by Paul Corfiatis (leader), Chris Hansen, Kristian Aro VIRGIL (the Doom Poet), Sam "Metabolist" Woodman4172 KB - Doom.exe - SP - 36 maps I suppose I COULD have reviewed this, but I didn't have time to traipse through a 4 episode megawad. I will however make mention of what's been updated for those that are interested. From the text file (adjusted for spelling):

MAPINFO bugs fixed. You can now complete any episode using ZDOOM, LEGACY, etc.

Improved texture alignment in E4M6

Improved music if using the Yamaha SXG50 driver and playing using ZDOOM

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Your doing something wrong if your getting missing textures n stuff in UACRebels. You need to enable models yes and you also need to use the -pwadtex command line flag. Otherwise you get missing textures and crappy low res ones.

Fano should have added them to the ksa.

Also Fano made that using Doomsday 1.8.1 rc3 any other version won't work correctly. He has said he'll update it once 1.8.1 final is out.

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It is, you should have been there when we tested some of the levels! :P The whole purpose of that wad was just a bunch of retarted, yet somewhat playable and fun dm maps. So basically its a playable jokewad. Yeah, moonbase is kinda underdetailed, when I map for vanilla I don't like it to make it too detailed to help make sure it will run. But the next thing from me will probaly be another dm pack, but this one isn't a jokewad, its a serious project! :P Im also working on a couple other projects, one I started last night for ZDoom(has tons of scripting and its a HUB!), and a coop megawad me and a friend of mine are making for ZDoom(right now its zdoom in doom mode, so nothing like scripts).

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Could be just random fluctuations. A slow week follows a very busy week - no great surprise.

Actually, I was a tiny bit surprised that so many people chose to release their stuff last week, knowing that RTC and Doom3 were coming out too. Maybe most people just release their stuff when it's ready.

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I know if I finished a wad right now, I'd release it on /newstuff 199. Because who else would release something in /newstuff 199? Nobody! Everybody'd just wait for 200! So my wad would be focus of the week ez.

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Actually, I was a tiny bit surprised that so many people chose to release their stuff last week, knowing that RTC and Doom3 were coming out too. Maybe most people just release their stuff when it's ready.

The problem was the week before that, Job didn't get alot of the maps reviwed, because they weren't added to the idgames archive in time (They were in newstuff, though). The result was the next week was stuffed full of maps, when it really should have been half that size.

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The result was the next week was stuffed full of maps, when it really should have been half that size.

No, that only accounted for a small part of it: 11.6 megs out of more than 90, and 24 maps out of about 80 (that's making the most liberal assumptions about which ones would have made it in time under normal circumstances). It was a huge week however you look at it. It was far and away biggest ever in terms of file size, and I think it would have been close to a record even without RTC or anything from the week before.

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First, there were missing textures on walls and models. I know I followed the instructions according to the readme. Once I do that and it still doesn't work right, then there's some serious problems. Secondly, the weapon models wouldn't even show up!

U ARE STUPID. You were suppossd to insta 1.8.0 first then install 1.8.1 OVAR it. Thats why you got the weapon bugs so you gave a crapped review becuase of your own stupid. I HATE YOU

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Best.wad seems to be in the wrong directory. It's 30 levels, which classifies it as a megawad, so it should be in ports/deathmatch/megawads (assuming the directory even exists. I usually don't download any DM wads). :P

On a completely useless note, my maps didn't make it in to best.wad. Crapz0r. :P

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A shame my wad didn't work correctly, problem is there were 2 differents releases of DD since i uploaded it so the Dll designed for Rc2 now run on Rc4... ...Note it's normal some weapons are not remplaced, i implemented only the weapons used in the level (gun,shotgun,heavy machinnegun & grenadelauncher)...
Anyway, I'll upload a new dll for DD1.8.1 final on my website (i someone want to try it after this review :P )

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On a completely useless note, my maps didn't make it in to best.wad. Crapz0r. :P

Hobomaster22 didn't accept them(he only accepted a few of mine), even though most of mine were good (same goes for your 2 Xaser). Knowing hobomaster22, he probaly didn't accept him because he didn't make them. ;) Almost all of his maps are just the square rooms. I had a bunch in the original version(all of them gold), and when he gave this to me to upload, he had ditched all but 2 of may maps, and he said it was because they were too retarted... He also won't shutup because I said this was a jokewad(which it obviously is), he says it isn't, but it is, he has even said so before...

And yes, should be in the megawads directory...

Wang didn't make any of the maps(doesn't know how), but the entire project was his idea.

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I kind of forgot about Xaser's maps (sorry man). At first it was a joke wad (not be released) but the maps did end up being really fun, so I decided to finish it up as a mega-wad, then to be released. Not being very high on my priority list I kind of wasnt paying too much attention to it. It's not that big of a deal . . who's gonnna play it anway . . ?

Oh yeah I forgot, It wasnt me who decided to get rid of all but two of your maps MoD. Wang and I went through the whole wad and he told me which ones to ditch. He had no idea who made what so, don't flame on me when you have no idea. Don't be so ingnorant. . .